We'll be Going to Church Soon
by Prayer Machine
Summary: AU! Seymour/Yuna. A story about dancing horses and forgotten vows.
1. Flight

This is for an AU that's gonna be running on the forum I RP Yuna on called Umieclue. Through some crack, Yuna and Seymour had Saix and Aqua as children (accidents.)

The following is my intro for the thread, it basically documents Yuna's life in the AU. Also she's smoking. Like I always wanted. Awwww yis.

As a little background: Yuna married Seymour when she was 17, after falling pregnant with him. She had been hoping to become a doctor, took a placement at a local hospital, and... well, things happened with the doctor she was supposed to be shadowing. This is set at least 35 years later, so she's at least in her 50s.

OK here goES.

—

The garden was nice. She could see the sea from here.

Her cigarette burned a bright orange spark into the night. She breathed out smoke, imagining for a moment she was a dragon and smiled at the childish thought. Fire in her thoughts, fire in her belly, fire in her mind. Mm. Maybe she really was a dragon. It would explain a lot of things.

A hand reached into her pocket, and she instinctively squeezed her fingers around her wedding ring. She couldn't bear to wear it any more. But she could bear to hold it. Run her fingers along the smooth edges, feel the diamonds poke into her skin. He'd lavished her. It had been too much, at the time. She'd said that. He just smiled and pretended he didn't care.

She'd wept into his shoulder. It was the first time she'd cried, since everything had happened. She wouldn't cry again until it was all over.

She couldn't let it go, not just yet. So she rolled it against her palm, let the diamonds drive in hard. Dragged on her cigarette. Felt her throat burn.

She could remember that morning so well. It was a Sunday, yes, it had to have been a Sunday. He was sitting on the balcony, his legs swinging. His hair was soft-lit by the gentle sky, it had been spring, but only just. The flowers were blooming. Lambs were being born, she loved the country. Loved everything in her house. Loved everything but him (well, that was complicated, but it was easier to say that in that moment, she truly did love _everything _but him.)

"We'll be going to church, soon."

That's all he said.

That was it, the sentence that murdered him. He said it every week. Every single Sunday. We'll be going to church soon, as though she didn't have a choice, as though she didn't already know that. Besides, he didn't believe in god.

She remembered that day, too.

Coffee wafted into her nostrils, she closed her eyes and imagined it. He was sitting at the table, hunched over a newspaper, smirking about some disaster (he always read the figures out to her "twenty wounded, six killed, a massacre." And she'd always said "that's terrible," and make a fuss, remember that she was a nurse, imagine what she could have done if she had been there. But, you know, he always just said "at least they're free from it all." And because it was so often some terrible war or conflict or battle out in the deserts where she imagined people drowned in sand and bullets every day, she'd nod and agree. It was true. Death was a release, in a way.) But she couldn't remember if he read her the figures that day or not, regardless, he had his cup of coffee and his newspaper.

He'd cooked her breakfast. Something meat-free. Control through kindness (no, that was unfair… he was just trying to be sweet, he always __tried_ _to be sweet.) So she sat down, went to eat. She stared at the front of the newspaper. Twenty had died in a bombing.

And then it bubbled up, a question she thought she'd never ask, a question that had always gone answered. But in that moment it was unanswered, and it was raw and liquid in her throat and she asked, "Do you believe in god?"

He looked at her straight in the eye. She remembered how blue they seemed, how the early morning light in them, how they sucked in all the light. She was memorised by them. They blinked.

She looked at the crucifix around his neck. Remembered all the times they had whispered psalms to each other when they made love, hissing bible verses between kisses, Jesus slipping out over his tongue and brushing over hers.

"No."

And then a small, wicked smile came over her. As though she'd won some victory. As though that "no" took back all the times they had made love, all the times he had scrabbled over her and whispered sweet nothings in her ear on a hospital bed (they did it in a coma ward, she decided to feel no regrets.) As though this "no" undid the crucifix and erased all the bitter little lies and exposed a weakness in his character, a falseness she was certain was always there but could never prove. She suddenly wanted to jump up on the table, kick the breakfast off, wave it in his face.

But he just smiled and arched his brow, in a manner she knew was his way of asking "well, what about you?"

Her excitement burst. She shrunk into her seat.

"Neither do I."

But they still went to church every Sunday. They still made their shows, paid their dues. Bowed their heads and prayed, while he put his hands on her leg and squeezed because (she assumed) the truth was that he was busy worshipping _her. _And though she swatted him away and glowered, she knew she felt a little flattered. And then she came the disgust, and the anger, and the guilt.

"We'll be going to church, soon."

She stepped forwards, yes. That was it. Her arms had been spread. He had thought, for once, she was going to be the one to love him. That she was going to embrace him. His eyes betrayed a kind of hope. It was that hope, that slight softening of his face, the way his cheeks fell flat a little, his eyes sparkled – it was that hope in his face that had kept her heart drumming bruised love. He kept coming back. He kept hoping, enduring. It was endearing, in a way. Like the way a puppy forgives you even if you kick it. He was always waiting, waiting for this moment, for her to embrace him.

He never got it.

She'd pushed him.

When he fell, she thought she heard him scream, for the first time in her life. She realized in retrospect that it was her own voice shrieking. When he fell, she begged he would grab onto a lower bannister, onto anything, somehow cling on and she'd pull him up and say she tripped and slipped and fell or anything – but it didn't happen. And, in retrospect, she'd never thought that at all. She hadn't thought of anything. She just screamed till her throat gave out while a single, burning thought whispered in her mind. In retrospect, she'd thought that thought had been, __we're not going to church now, you fucking bastard_ . _But it wasn't that at all, she'd just pretended to have that spite, later on.

Later, when she went back into the house, rifled through his things and burned most of them (as though that would burn up her guilt, burn up her hatred, burn up all her 'I'm sorry's". They didn't) and found out more things from his death than in his life. He'd hidden so much. Boxes and boxes of pills, anti-depressants (he'd self medicated, apparently.) Diaries that she couldn't bear to read (but kept, in case – she had let her children read it, though, if they wanted. But she wouldn't, couldn't, not yet.) And a single photograph. She'd thought it was a mistress, at first. The photo was black and white, giving the woman the impression of huge, charcoal eyes. Not innocent, but beautiful, with lips like rose buds and a watery smile, and hair black hair slicked back over her shoulders that, in the polaroid, made it look like she was wearing a huge veil.

She had the saddest eyes she'd ever seen.

She realized, then, that she recognised those eyes.

Those were her husband's eyes.

And she hadn't cried when she pushed him, when she heard his bones snap and break. Hadn't cried when the police came, interrogated her, ripped up the house. Didn't cry when she phoned the children, explained to them that their father was dead and secretly wondered if they were happy about it. But she cried then. She cried for those sad, bleak, charcoal eyes.

That photograph still sat in her bedroom. Beside the picture of her father.

She rubbed the wedding ring again, dragged on her cigarette. What was it, anyway, she had thought when she pushed him? It was something funny… something out place, that had burst into her memory out of nowhere. Oh, yes. She smirked, fought down dreary laughter.

_He couldn't fly ._


	2. Dancing Horses

She remembered, perhaps most of all, the sunlight.

Saix must have been two or three, just born, sisterless. Rikku had taken him for the weekend, told her it was time she relaxed. She didn't understand. She found being with her son the most relaxing thing of all, certainly better than being left alone. The house ached when she was left alone.

But Seymour took time off work.

She didn't know why that seemed so significant, enough to make it its own sentence. Enough to make it shrouded in importance. Maybe she should have decorated it, in little girlish scribbles, dotted the single i with a loveheart. She could do that easily, in her memory, she supposed. Maybe she should write it down. Maybe it was better as just a dream.

He took time off work, and took her to the country. Not that they didn't already live in the country, but the real kind. Where they stayed - it was domestic, forlorn, lazy. Near a beach, near a wood. Sometimes they made bonfires, on special days - but Saix would complain about the smoke and go running off. That must have been why those days stopped… she was going off an tangents again, fast-forwarding the years. But twenty years all seemed to bundle up together, mix and reel and flow back and forth, like a sea of memory. Nothing changed but the children's ages, as tough they were weathered rocks rising out of the ocean, battered by it. They marked time.

He took her to the sun.

It burned orange on her skin. She remembered the light. Unreal. The early morning caused the sky to be bleached of colour, stripped down to the palest blue. But the sun stayed like a hole that threatened to suck her up. And maybe she was, in a way, sucked up into it. But she didn't burn. She felt safe in its centre. In its warmth.

A bird with a voice like a bell sung. The grass was green. There were no trees for miles around, the horizon so big that she couldn't wait for the stars. He took her to were there were still wild horses.

Before the sunlight, and the bleached skies, before all that - they had went sneaking through the fields. He'd kept his hand over hers, tried to take her weight where he could. Be her pillar of strength (a buzzword he seemed to like repeating. She never really understood.) But she liked the walk and the hike, even when the sun was hidden and the grass chilled and the sky fell around them like thick fog.

They hid down in the grass, hid in silence. She refused to let it crack. He whispered something, his voice snaking through the air. But she didn't say anything. She just waited, patience of a saint.

And then the horses came.

Black shadows, trotting round one another. Unaware of them, or perhaps aware - but uncaring. The memories had long become faded, blurred - but in her dreams they still seemed so real. Like she'd zoomed into them three times over, each and every hair on their skin magnified. And they danced, in her memory. Round and round one another, floating on air. Hooves glittering when the sun finally burst the seams of the horizon.

She saw them fight.

Two males, tussling in the dirt. Bloody, muscled, sweat dripping from them as their throats breathed thunder and ache and strength. She wanted them to stop. He held her hand, shook his head. She'd kill herself. They wouldn't stop.

It was ugly. It was beautiful.

She saw them leave, running off into the horizon - dark shapes and long manes and heavy hooves zip-zipping away. It was like they'd just decided enough was enough, and they were gone.

She wondered if it was just a dream, sometimes. Because he promised he'd take her back. Make a tradition out of it. But then she fell pregnant, again, and he grew busier at work. They just forgot about it, meant to make something, out of it, meant to come here again. They just forgot. Or maybe it never happened.

She remembered the sunlight, though. She couldn't have dreamed that.

They'd gone running. He promised to teach her how to ride. She asked if it was cruel, to ride horses, to break them in and stick pointy things in their sides. He said that many things in life were cruel, and that it was just their lives. Think of it like a job. She'd been breathless, then, with running, pretending she was a horse. Breathless and laughing. Work for hay, maybe it didn't seem so bad, if she saw it that way. She worked for nothing.

He never taught her.

She wished he had. They could have gone riding on the beach. She'd name hers Ixion. He'd choose something historical, after Napoleon's horse, or something else. A warhorse, though, she was sure. He had a fondness for war. Maybe she'd have broken her limbs. Maybe he'd snap his hair clean off, she'd laughed, when she told him that fear. He'd smirked.

After they'd set up the tent (she'd insisted on a tent, though he complained of the bugs. Said he didn't particularly want to sleep on the earth. Couldn't they just find a hotel? She'd been stubborn) they played chess. He kissed her every time she took one of his pieces. Deepened it when she took his queen. Made love to her when she won.

He always liked it, when she destroyed him.

…

She still dreamed of those horses. They made circles in her brain. Some symbol that was supposed to have meaning, bleeding in and out of her thought, dreary and restless. Muscular, tired, fighting forever. For what? Why did they fight like that, cut each other open, like that? Was it for love? Did they like to be destroyed, too? Two knights on a single checker patch, struggling because of invisible fingers poking and prodding them in one direction.

No, she thought. Chess didn't involve fighting, she remembered now, what Seymour said. Pieces just fell down. It was instant. The slaughter was painless.

…

She remembered, maybe even more than the sunlight, them walking away. She'd like to walk with them, sometime, go wherever it was they went. Maybe even fade out of the rim of her memory, with them. Vanish into the horizon.

"Once, when I was a teenager, I wanted horses tattooed on my chest," he'd whispered to her in the night. She'd rolled over, placed her hand on him. His skin had glowed (like he'd sucked up the sunlight.) She'd arched how brows, laughed.

"You, with tattoos?" He'd pressed his head to hers, said something, made her laugh again. "I can't imagine it…" And then, "Maybe you should."

He never did.

She'd laughed when they had went running. She'd pretended they were horses.

Maybe they'd been fighting. Maybe they were like chess pieces. Two knights, on a single checker patch.

She'd won.


End file.
